
DATE: Friday, May 2, 1997                   TAG: 9705020607

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  128 lines

HAIL HAMMERS THE AREA HAILSTONES AS BIG AS GOLF BALLS WERE REPORTED IN ALL THE SOUTH HAMPTON ROADS CITIES. AT LEAST TWO PEOPLE WERE HURT IN NORFOLK.

Severe thunderstorms machine-gunned the region Thursday with twin bursts of hail - sometimes as large as baseballs - that left many neighborhoods as white as winter on the first day of May.

``It was like the end of the world,'' said Caroline Vaaler as she surveyed the damage to her Westover Avenue home in Norfolk's Ghent section after hailstones smashed at least 10 panes of glass - ``those nice, old Ghent house windows.''

As Minnesota natives, Vaaler and her husband, Andrew, are used to severe thunderstorms and hail. ``But this was the worst hailstorm we've ever been through,'' she said. ``It was scary.''

Hailstones ranging in size from mothballs to golf balls were reported in all the Southside cities, with baseball-sized hail on parts of the Peninsula, including Langley Air Force Base in Hampton.

At least two people were hurt in Norfolk, police said, when they were caught in the open and struck repeatedly by hailstones.

A woman was hit in the head in the 500 block of West 38th Street, and a teen-ager who was trying to run for cover told paramedics he was in pain after being pelted. Neither was hospitalized.

In downtown Norfolk, hail was followed by torrential rains and then a second round of hail. The icy stones threw plumes of water three feet high as they struck storm-formed rivers streaming down streets.

Winds gusted to 60 mph, enough to set huge trash cans rolling along and to bend small trees. ``The wind was hitting the windows really hard,'' said Ismael Medina, a NationsBank employee who was at work in the Royster Building downtown. ``I thought they were going to blow in.''

The hail and winds ripped at spring foliage, leaving cars that were parked near trees covered in leaves while wrecking some flower gardens. And anywhere there was metal, the hail threw up a racket.

``The noise was so loud I couldn't even hear myself scream,'' said Caitie Meehan, 15, who escaped the hailstorm by seeking cover under the stadium at Western Branch High School in Chesapeake.

``We were on the soccer field and it just came right down on us,'' Meehan said. They watched as the hail smashed the rear windows and taillights of cars parked nearby.

Within seconds, the soccer field ``was covered like a big blanket of snow,'' Meehan said. And once the storm had passed, ``we went out and started throwing it at each other.''

Area police were swamped with hundreds of calls reporting everything from hail-smashed windows to wind-felled trees - calls that will likely increase in number today as insurance agents begin to get damage claims.

In Virginia Beach, Paul Higgins walked around his front yard in the 1500 block of Janke Road with a portable phone in hand as he tried to reach his insurer. With each step, hailstones crunched underfoot.

``It all came so quick,'' Higgins said. ``It looked like a sheet, a white wall.'' And, he said, ``it sounded like a train. I grabbed my baby and my wife and we went in the bathroom and took cover. I thought it was like a tornado.''

Hailstones tore holes through the lining of his above-ground pool and ``punched holes in the siding of my house,'' Higgins said. Gusty winds also knocked down a tree in a nearby yard.

Higgins said the golf-ball-sized hail piled up two inches deep in his yard but was melting quickly. ``My whole yard looks like it's been snowing.''

Thursday's storms developed along twin frontal lines moving eastward as cold air from the west swooped in on warmer air from the south.

``This is one of the more severe episodes we've seen'' of storms forming along the frontal lines, which stretched from New England through North Carolina, said Fred Ostby, a severe-weather specialist with The Weather Channel in Atlanta.

In Portsmouth, ``it sounded like the roof was going to come in, like the windows were going to break,'' said Bernice Turner, who lives in the Churchland area. ``It was awful.''

Andrea Mackenzie had water seeping into her Chesapeake Beach condominium in Virginia Beach after hail damaged the structure.

``At first I wasn't afraid. I figured it was just a hailstorm,'' Mackenzie said. But then the noise increased as the hail intensified.

She fled to a hallway from her living room, where she feared that two skylights might shatter.

``Then water just started coming through the walls and the lights,'' she said, as hail ripped open small holes in the roof and damaged skylights.

``There's a good 10-inch pile of hail under my back porch,'' she said shortly after the storm passed. ``It looks like someone dumped out some coolers of ice.''

A neighbor, Jary Gershon, said his convertible was left with ``dents in the hood and the trunk, and the plastic window looks like it has bullet holes in it.''

Gershon said he scooped up some of the golf-ball-sized ``ice things, and I put them in a bowl and threw them in the freezer to show my wife.''

In the aftermath, people came from their homes to survey the damage and take in the surreal sight.

``There were limbs down, and it was strange because it was warm and there was steam rising'' from the melting hailstones, Gershon said. ``It was up to 8 to 10 inches deep in some places here.''

And then, in the midst of it all, ``an ice cream truck pulls up,'' Gershon said. ``I went in and got my camera to take a picture of it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by JIM WALKER

Sheets of hail pound a yard on Monitor Road in Portsmouth. On the

Peninsula, including Langley Air Force Base, hailstones as large as

baseballs were reported.

Color photo by LAWRENCE JACKSON

Hail gave many parts of Hampton Roads a wintry look, but only

briefly.

Photo by L. TODD SPENCER

Many windows, including a car's back window in downtown Norfolk,

above, didn't survive the storm.

Photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II/The Virginian-Pilot

At right, Jake the Doberman seems mesmerized by steam rising from

hailstones on the banks of the Nansemond River.